


she's got me up all night & all i'm singing is love songs

by wolfchester



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: 5+1 trope, F/M, bellamy doesn't know how to express himself with words like a normal person, bellamy's also an overdramatic little arse, clarke is amazing, lovesick bellamy, octavia is the queen, spot the mob city quote
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-22
Updated: 2014-11-22
Packaged: 2018-02-26 14:05:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2654747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wolfchester/pseuds/wolfchester
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Bellamy almost told Clarke he loved her, and one time she did it for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	she's got me up all night & all i'm singing is love songs

**Author's Note:**

> You're everything I left behind  
> You're everything that I can't find  
> It's a mountain in the hole, mountain in our hearts
> 
> \- 'Mountain', Halfnoise

**1.**

**I opened my mouth, almost said something. Almost. The rest of my life might have turned out differently if I had. But I didn’t.**

\- _The Kite Runner_

 

Finn and Clarke leave in the morning to conduct this “meeting” with the Grounders, but they don’t go until Clarke has rendezvoused with Bellamy, making sure he’s got the guns and backup ready.

“Be careful out there, Princess” he says, trying to keep the concern out of his voice and instead masking it with a cheeky smile.

She raises an eyebrow and starts to exit Bellamy’s tent. “I’ll try.” 

She turns to walk away and he can’t say _anything_ to her, not even goodbye. He swallows the words he was going to say. The remnants of them sit in his quiet mouth, hollow-tasting and bitter. 

 _I love you_ , he thinks as he watches her leave. _I love you_. 

It’s the first time Bellamy has ever thought about the concept of love since his mother was floated (apart from the love he feels for Octavia, of course). And he never thought he would be thinking it about Clarke Griffin, brave princess of the 100 who doesn’t take no for an answer and is possibly the biggest pain-in-the-ass he’s ever known. 

Bellamy almost smiles then, turning the words over and over in his mouth. _I love you_. It’s new and weird and he might just be crazy, but he thinks- he thinks he might mean it.

 

* * *

 

**2.**

**If the moon smiled, she would resemble you. You leave the same impression. Of something beautiful, but annihilating.**

\- Sylvia Plath

 

He finds her standing in the makeshift cemetery they have created on the outskirts of the camp, alone, staring at the ground. 

“What are you doing outside the wall without a gun?” he says, boots crunching leaves as he walks. 

“Fourteen graves,” she whispers, eyes watering, mouth set in a hard line. “86 of us left, Bellamy. 86.” She takes a deep breath, blinks, looks at her shoes and then up at him. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.” 

Bellamy sees the fear in her eyes and knows it’s in his, too. “We all have to make choices we don’t like if we want to survive, Princess.” 

“How can you say that?” she says, searching his face for some sort of understanding. “These were just kids, Bellamy. _We’re_ just kids. None of this was meant to happen. We could be dead by morning because of this _stupid_ war with the Grounders and-” she balls her fists at her sides and exhales loudly. 

Then she looks him in the eyes, raises her chin in defiance and hisses: “Fourteen, Bellamy. How many more?” 

Clarke walks away from him, then, teeth grinding and blonde hair flying. She is beautiful, and she is dangerous and brave and he likes the strength she carries within her. 

“I’m sorry,” he says into the dark. “I love you,” he whispers, even though she can’t hear him anymore.

 

* * *

 

 

**3.**

**I want to love, but my hair smells of war and running and running.**

\- Warsan Shire

 

They’re running through the woods, trying to escape the danger that chases them in the form of banging drums and war cries. Then suddenly, the trail opens up and drops straight off - the cliff where little Charlotte plunged to her death. 

But he’s going too fast, he can’t stop in time, he- 

“Bellamy!” he hears her scream, and then he’s tripping and falling and falling and _oh god, this is the end_ and- _wait_. 

“Hey, it’s okay, I got you,” she says, her hands tight around his waist. He’s dangling over the edge of the chasm, trying to catch his heartbeat. He takes a step back, moves away from the end of his life to the girl who saved him. 

“I love you…” he says breathlessly, clutching on to her forearms for dear life. Then he notices the quizzical look she’s giving him and follows up with a grin and: “...when you, you know, save my life.” 

She thumps him on the shoulder and he winces. Clarke rolls her eyes and says: “You’re such an idiot.” 

He just laughs and tries to still his beating heart, the adrenalin in his veins, because that could have been the _end_ of Bellamy Blake but she- she saved him. 

At the end of the day, when it’s safe to return home (it’s funny how quickly the mismatched arrangement of tents and drop ship has become _home_ ), the two of them walk side-by-side at the back of the group. 

“You did good today, Princess,” he says, giving her a quick side-eyed smile. 

She grins back. “Well, I couldn’t leave you to _die_ , now, could I? I can’t run these kids on my own.” There’s a playful twinkle in her eyes and he wants to reply with something witty but ends up just chuckling and saying: 

“Yeah, I know.”

They don’t talk much until the group reaches the gate to the camp. Bellamy can hear Miller shout “Open the gate! It’s Bellamy and Clarke’s group!” and everything is hectic and rushed after that, Clarke tending to cuts and scrapes and broken bones collected from the chase through the woods. And all Bellamy can do is half-heartedly brief tomorrows hunting group while he watches Clarke work, steady hands and fingers, concentrated frown. 

He wants to love her. He wants to love her so bad. He wants to be the person that she can come to, share her stories, her fears, her dreams. He wants to love this wild heart of a girl but he doesn’t know how. 

Because Bellamy’s a mess. He knows it, too. He sees the way people look at him out of pity. Knows they see him as a boy who lost his mother, grew up too fast, made some bad decisions. Knows that though they see him as their leader, they also see him as a monster. A murderer. Too cruel. Too...too _messy_. 

His hair is a mess, his eyes are bloodshot, his nose won’t stop running, and his brain will just _not shut up_ about Clarke Griffin.

The outline of her face is burned against his eyelids, and she’s all he can see when he falls asleep. 

She doesn’t love him. She can’t. She’s _far_ too good for him. And besides, he sees the way she looks at Finn. Sees that she doesn’t look at _him_ that way.

(The thought doesn’t occur to him that maybe he’s just not looking at her when she does.)

 

* * *

 

**4.**

**I look at you, and I just love you, and it terrifies me. It terrifies me what I would do for you.**

\- Alexandra Bracken

 

The next time he almost says it, he doesn’t even say it in words as such, but in his actions. 

He’s just killed a Grounder that was about to attack her while on a hunting trip, and Clarke is furious with him. 

“You can’t just _do_ that, Bellamy!” she yells, shoving his chest. “You can’t just _shoot_ people whenever you feel like it!” Her eyes are wild and dark, and he’s never seen her this angry before. Not since the beginning, not since he tried to kill Murphy, not since anything. “That Grounder wasn’t doing anything to hurt me, Bellamy. We could have brought him in for questioning, used him for information or-” 

“He was trying to _kill you_ , Clarke!” he shouts, stepping closer to her and looking her right in the eyes. _  
_

“But you shouldn’t have done _that_!” she says, liquid pooling in her eyes, streaming down her cheeks. He thinks to himself that this is an awful lot of fuss over a Grounder, that maybe this is part of a bigger problem. 

“I would do it again!” he yells, then repeats softer: “I would do it again, and again, and _again_. To keep you safe I’d kill a hundred men like him and a hundred after that!” He cups her face in his dirty hands and brushes away the sticky paths of her tears, whispers: “I’d burn down the world if I had to.” 

She sees the tears welling up in his eyes and closes her own, unconsciously leaning into the pressure of his hands against her cheeks. “Bell-” 

It’s the first time she’s ever called him that, and he doesn’t even care that it’s O’s nickname for him, because it sounds so sweet and new coming from Clarke’s mouth. “Clarke,” he says. “Listen to me. There is nothing that I wouldn’t do for you. You have to understand that.” His eyes flicker down to her lips, to her eyes, to her lips. And he thinks about kissing her. Thinks about pulling her towards him and planting one on her, tangling his hands in her hair, saying _don’t you ever do that again_. But he can’t of course. He can’t. 

His heart almost goes into overdrive with what she does next. Clarke tilts her head and kisses the palms of his hands on her cheeks, lifts both off her face and down to her sides where she carefully, cautiously, intertwines their fingers together. 

“I know, Bellamy,” she says, squeezing his hands before letting go. “I know you would. And that scares me, Bellamy-” her voice quivers a little and it’s the most heartbreaking thing Bellamy’s ever witnessed. “I don’t- I don’t want more people hurt because of me.” _Ah, there it is_ , he thinks, _the bigger problem_. Clarke, who spends her life trying to nurse people back to health, doesn’t want people dying because of her, whether it be by her own hand or someone else’s. He understands, of course, but its hard to accept when his Princess seems to always be in one dangerous situation or another.

“Okay,” he says. “Okay. But you gotta stop getting yourself into trouble, alright? I worry about you.” 

( _I worry about you_ , he says. _I love you_ , he means.)

 

* * *

 

**5.**

**My want has burning fingers; You are the first person not to ask me to put out all my light.**

\- Emma Bleker, _I Cannot Tell You How Fantastic It Feels To Be Allowed To Burn After Years Of Being Given Fire Extinguishers As Birthday Presents_

 

It’s eight days since the situation with the Grounder, since Bellamy thought about kissing Clarke Griffin. And he can’t keep his _eyes_ off her, or his hands, or his mind, or his heart.

She’s helping Octavia clean up Monroe’s head wound from the other day and he finds a way to be doing something inside the drop ship while she does. She asks O to get her some hot water, and before his sister can speak, Bellamy jumps up and says _“let me do it!”_  Clarke just looks at him with a questioning frown as he races off to do just that. 

Then he comes back with cup of water in hand and gives it to her, and their fingers brush and Bellamy’s breath catches and he thinks _what the hell am I doing?_  

Clarke starts acting weird around him, then. Maybe she talked to Octavia, and maybe his sister told Princess what he’d said the night before: 

_“I’m scared, O. I don’t know what’s happening to me.”_

_“It’s called love, Bell. Happens to the best of us.”_

Then there's two more days of dancing around each other, of Miller running messages between them because Bellamy finds it too awkward to talk to her when she keeps _looking at him_ like that, like she knows something he doesn’t. 

The afternoon of the second day, Octavia marches up to him while he’s in the middle of helping Murphy and Miller clean the guns they had just been using on a hunt. She looks him right in the face, grabs the front of his shirt, and yells at him (in front of the entire camp): 

“What the _hell_ are you doing, Bellamy Blake?” 

He frowns. “I- I honestly have no idea what you’re-” 

Octavia pulls his face closer towards his and hisses: “You need to get your shit together, Bellamy. Both you and Clarke do. Go and sort out your shit _together_ or something, I don’t know!” Then she releases him, shoving him away with a light hand. His eyes are wide and, frankly, he’s scared. Hell hath no fury than a pissed younger sister. “Sort out what you and Clarke have going on or I’m going to kill you both in your sleep. You’ve been moping around the past few days and so has she because _neither of you dumbasses are talking to each other_ , and we can’t run this camp without you two in your right minds!”

Bellamy stands there shocked, Miller and Murphy looking on an sniggering. A small crowd has gathered around the area, watching the exchange. 

“Sort it out, Bell,” Octavia says, looking pointedly over her shoulder at him as she strides away. “I don’t want to have to ask you again.” 

Bellamy clears his throat after a second, processing what his sister’s just said. Then, he notices the assembly of kids watching him and waves his hands, yelling: “Alright, alright. Nothing to see here.” 

They talk amongst themselves as they separate, glancing at Bellamy and whispering. He turns around to see Miller and Murphy leaning on the table filled with guns, grinning at him.

“What was that all about, huh, Blake?” Murphy says, smirking at him like the little shit he is. 

Bellamy rolls his eyes. “Get back to work.” 

That night, they’re sitting around the campfire after dinner, everyone drinking Monty’s moonshine and chewing on rabbit bones. Miller sits next to him, chatting up some girl - Holden, he thinks her name was - with braided hair and a beaming smile. She looks at Miller like he set the stars in the sky, laughs at everything he says, touches his arm whenever the opportunity arises. (Bellamy can’t help but wish that someone would look at _him_ like that. It’s a juvenile thought, and he feels stupid for even thinking it, but sometimes you can’t help what you feel, can you?) 

Across the fire from him, Clarke chooses that moment to stand up, dust off her clothes, and hug Raven and Octavia goodnight, telling the other kids sitting around that she’ll see them tomorrow morning. As she disappears into the dark, his eyes following her back, Miller nudges him in the shoulder. 

He’s got an arm around Holden, eyes bright. “Go on, boss,” Miller says. “You know you want to.”

Bellamy frowns, twiddles his thumbs in his hands, cogs whirring in his head. “You know, I-” he stands up, hands in pockets, turns around to face Miller and Holden. “I’m just gonna- I have to-” he clears his throat and starts to back away. 

Miller laughs and rolls his eyes. “Get out of here, Blake.” 

“Right,” Bellamy says. “Yes. I’m- uh, I’m going to do that.” 

Miller’s laughter follows him to the door of Clarke’s tent. He steps inside, heart pounding, _why is he so goddamn nervous?_  

It’s dark inside, save for a little torch she has perched on her drawing desk where she sits now, working on some unseen piece of art. She starts when she hears footsteps, whips her head around to see-

“Bellamy?” 

“Hey, Princess,” he says. Shoving his hands back in his pockets. 

She frowns. “What are you doing here?” 

“I- uh, I thought-”

Suddenly, her face lights up and she understands. “Did Octavia talk to you, too?” she asks, a soft lilt to her voice. 

He rubs the back of his neck with one hand. “Yeah.” 

She lets out a short laugh. “Figures.” 

They stand in silence for a moment, Bellamy awkward at the tent entrance and Clarke at the desk.

Bellamy clears his throat, starts to say _“so what should we do about it?”_ but in the time he’s managed to get the first five words out, Clarke’s crossed tent and is pressing her lips against his.

He can’t breathe for a second, eyes wide open, trying to figure out what the _hell_ is going on. Yeah, okay, so he’s kind of used to girls wanting him, but he’s not used to not knowing what to _do_ about it. 

She pulls away, leans her forehead against his. “ _That’s_ what we do about it,” she whispers, the ghost of a smile on her lips. 

He’s about to ask _“what next?”_ but then she’s tugging at the collar of his jacket, pulling his lips down to meet hers. 

His hands find their way to the curve of her hips and she lets out a little breath when his fingers brush the skin between her pants and shirt. 

“Bellamy-” she breathes against the side of his neck, his mouth kissing lines down her jaw. 

He pulls back, looks her straight in the eyes. Sees her pupils are blown black, lips swollen, eyes half shut. “Is this- is this okay?” he asks, and he’s so goddamn _nervous_ about kissing this girl and being with this girl that he’s not sure if he can function properly. 

“Yeah,” she says, then laces her fingers through his hair. “Yeah. I’m sure. It was bound to happen anyway, right?” 

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, of course, I mean, I guess-” 

She rolls her eyes. “Shut up and get back to kissing me, please.”

Bellamy grins and does just that, pulling her towards him even closer so that they’re chest-to-chest, and he _swears_ he can feel her heart beating through her shirt.

“Are you _sure_ this is a good idea?” he asks and she nods, leaning up to kiss him again. 

“I swear to _god_ , Bell, if you ask me one more time if I’m okay with this, I’m going to kill someone,” she says, fiddling with Bellamy’s belt buckle as she backs him towards the bed at the centre of the tent. 

“Please don’t do that,” he laughs.

Before he can even catch another breath, her hands are pulling his shirt over his head, and then her fingers are dancing across his chest, and her lips are so warm and safe against his skin. He feels like he’s meant to be here. That this was always going to happen. Like this is- it’s _home_ somehow. Like he- 

“I love you,” he whispers into her mouth as she kisses him. Her lips freeze on his and she pulls away slightly, looking him in the eyes. His eyelids snap shut and he swallows once, twice. 

“You what?” Her face is so innocent in that moment, so childlike and sweet. He doesn’t want to ruin this moment any further, scare her off with proclamations of things he’s not even sure of himself. (He’s sure as _shit_ , but he doesn’t want to admit it officially.) 

“Nothing,” he says, grinning wide and then kissing her again. “It’s nothing, don’t worry.” 

She knows it’s not _nothing_ but doesn’t dispute the matter because he’s kissing down the side of her neck, and his cold hands have made their way under her shirt, and there’s nothing that she cares about right now except the way Bellamy’s lips feel on her skin.

 

* * *

 

**6.**

**You’re in love with him, and he’s in love with you, and it’s like a goddamn tragedy, because you look at him and see the stars, and he looks at you and sees the sun. And you both think the other is just looking at the ground. But god; just notice you’re both looking at the sky.**

\- Unknown

 

He wakes up the next morning to blonde hair on his pillow, warm breath in his face. She’s fast asleep, mouth slightly open, breathing softly. She looks almost _angelic_ , he thinks. Brushes the hair out of her face with his fingers, kisses her nose carefully before lifting off the covers and getting out of bed. 

He’s pulling on his pants and shirt from the night before when he hears a rustling and turns around to find Clarke sitting up, facing him, blankets clutched to her chest. He can see red marks on her neck and collarbone (some of which will be very hard to cover up seeing as they have a limited amount of clothing options). Feels a twisted sense of inner satisfaction that says, _that was me, I did that_. It’s like he’s marking his territory, a message to everyone else that says, _hey, this girl is mine_. If only she would- 

“I love you, too,” Clarke says, grinning at him from the other side of the bed. 

He pauses for a moment, trying to digest her words. “What?” he says finally, feigning innocence. 

“Bellamy,” she says, tilting her head to the side smiling slowly. “I’m not stupid, and I know you’re not either.” 

His heart is beating so _goddamn fast_ that he can barely get a breath in to whisper: “Clarke-” 

Then she’s standing up in front of him, blankets wrapped around her body, hands going up to thread through his hair. “Bellamy,” she says again and grins. “Don’t be an idiot.” 

One hand finds its way to her waist, the other to brush against her cheek. “I love you,” he says. 

And it’s not preceded by an _I think_ , or followed by an _it’s nothing_. It’s not just thought, or whispered, or joked about. 

It’s final, and it’s true, and he means it with every fibre of his being. 

“I know,” she replies, kissing him once, twice, on the mouth. “I know.” 

 

**end.**

 


End file.
